Grand Junction, Colorado to Beaver, Utah

We had a glorious drive today - the scenery in southern Utah is just astounding. Around every curve, we said "WOW!" I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves;

















As soon as we got to Beaver we started looking for caches. The first one we found was by an alpaca farm - These have to be the cutest mammals in existence!!





Caching in Utah - this was the only tree from here to the horizon!



Pioneers had to have been the hardiest, bravest, most adventuresome people that there ever were - this wagon is very small and looks creaky and uncomfortable. So glad I was born in the 20th century!



We found the caching around Beaver to be very disappointing. The caches are not well maintained at all - several are missing and not archived. We did manage to find five - but I have to say that caching in Michigan is much more fun. We now have found caches in 49 States! Ta-da! Next Spring - Hawaii.

Farmington, New Mexico to Grand Junction, Colorado

The first things we saw when we entered Colorado were beautiful, snow-covered mountains in the distance. How great, I thought. We'll have this wonderful scenery all day long! Little did I know....

The first town we went through in Colorado was Durango - it's a really nice looking town - touristy, historic, and ultra-Western, North of Durango we drove past field after field of hay or wheat, with every type of irrigation that you've ever heard of going full blast in every field.

The road we were taking to Grand Junction went right through the mountains, entailing everything you know about mountain driving - a long, long, twisty, turny narrow road - sheer drops of hundreds of feet with only a frail looking guardrail to protect you - and sometimes no guardrail at all !! This would have been a challenging drive on a hot summer day - but wait....all of a sudden our twisty road was bordered by snow - wow - look at that - we'd better take a picture! (We thought it was some kind of an anomaly.) We actually thought that this was a lot of snow for May 21:



This is called Engineering Mountain:





Then the piled up snow was deeper and deeper. We began to see signs saying Avalanche Area No Stopping or Standing, and Icy Roads, Use Caution. And it was true. On many of the hairpin turns the road was icy and the drop-offs were perilous - how exciting (not).

We reached Silverton in one piece, glad of a chance to stretch our legs and make a pit stop. Drove around the Main street (the only paved street in town) to d0 some sight seeing and to drive on the level for a change. I foolishly thought that now we were through with the mountain driving. The sign said Ouray 29 miles. It turned out to be 29 miles of more mountainous driving, with even steeper drop-offs and deeper canyons. Holy cow.





After driving through the mountain roller coaster, driving on t0 Grand Junction was a piece of cake. Ate lunch at the Pufferbelly Station Restaurant - really - found a motel, and went caching.
The Riverwalk Park held many caches, and Dick photographed these sculptures along the path.





We found five caches this afternoon in Grand Junction. It's a beautiful city and today was a glorious sunny, warm blue sky kind of a day. We had a grat time.

Winslow, Arizona to Farmington, New Mexico

The rocky outcroppings in this part of the country are amazing.
Pictures are worth 10,000 words:

Here's our trusty Jeep Compass in the wilderness of New Mexico. It has no temperature read-out and also - no compass! Go figure.

So far on this trip we have found 17 geocaches, and added 3 States to our total of States geocached.

Las Vegas to Winslow

An early morning drive down the Las Vegas "Strip" was very exciting. Block after block of eye candy such as a hick from punkin crick has never experienced! You have to forgive me - it took me 75 years to get here!









On the way to Winslow, we stopped for coffee at the McDonald's in Boulder City. It was delightful to find sculptures all the way around the building - children playing, working, and participating in various sports. Sometimes wonderful things pop up when you least expect it!

This one we photographed in honor of tennis-playing Dylan:







Driving through the mountains of northern Arizona suddenly became just like driving in Michigan in March. We've all seen this til we're blue in the face, but hey - this is May 19th!





Winslow, Arizona has many reasons for civic pride. One of them is this memorial featuring two steel beams from the World Trade Center, and a flag that few over the Pentagon. It was in an out of the way spot, and if it weren't for geocaching, we wouldn't have seen it.





Another highlight in Winslow is this urban "park" illustrating the song "Take It Easy", by the Eagles.

Las Vegas

Our first flight was significantly delayed, so we missed our connection at O'Hare. We rebooked for a noon flight, and read and drank coffee for a couple of hours - not bad at all. Luckily, I had downloaded a great old book into the kindle (Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy).

The flight to Vegas was memorable for the chatty sisters behind us - I'm saying non-stop - the chatty couple across the aisle who were on their knees in their seats so they couldturn around and talk to the couple behind them - I'm saying non-stop - and the crying baby 10 rows ahead of us who luckily only cried intermittently if loudly. This all made it harder to concentrate on the kindle, but not impossible. Other than that, it was uneventful. The scenery out the window was spectacular - what a treat to see so much snow in the mountains (?).

We got a nice Jeep station wagon for the week, and headed for the motel. We came to get away from it all, but it seems we brought quite a bit of it along with us - because after all, when we got here we were still us. Lovely suite at the Comfort Inn, nice dinner at Pei Wei, and looking forward to tomorrow.

Go West, Old Folks!

Tomorrow we're flying to Las Vegas for a two week Western adventure. We're not really doing the Vegas thing - we'e doing the Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah thing. The goal is to find a geocache in every State and we need these 5 States. After this, the only one left is Hawaii, and we're looking at next Spring for that.

When the geocaching is finished, we plan to fly to San Diego to stay with Tom and see his new kitchen! Also while we're out there, we'll be going to Jacob's Bar Mitzvah, and event not to be missed! Just think - we used to call him Jakie Bare Nakie ! Maybe I shouldn't remind him of that...

Monday after the Bar Mitzvah (Memorial Day) I hear that there's a BBQ at Kevin and Amy's new house! It will be exciting to see Maya - oh yes, and the new house!

This is kind of a bad time to leave Northern Michigan - blossom time! Things are so beautiful around here that in a way I hate to leave - but just try to talk me out of it!

"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...leaving on a jet plane.."

Mother's Day 2011

Don't you just love Mother's Day? First of all, yesterday flowers were delivered from the kids. Not just any old flowers, but the longest stemmed, biggest blooms of perfect yellow roses that you ever saw. They are truly amazing!

Then today, we set out on our long-planned road trip to Ludington to see their new art park. This trip had been postponed a couple of times because Old Man Winter refused to give way - but today was an absolutely perfect day to do it.

Dick got out our new yellow jeep ragtop (we love that jeep) and off we went on our adventure. We started close to home with breakfast at Rico's. They had a very nice buffet - it was yummy. We hadn't planned to go there, but a little research showed that Hofbrau opens at 10 on Sunday, and Dinghy's at noon. We were itching to get started, and Rico's filled in very nicely.

We headed straight to Ludington, so we could geocache our way home. There was one interesting detour where a bridge was out. It put us down some roads we'd never been on before, and that's fun, too.

At Mesick, there was some kind of festival/carnival/art fair/flea market going on - don't know what that was all about. I googled it, and it turned out to be the Morel Mushroom Festival - http://www.mesick-mushroomfest.org/. Already at 10:30 in the morning there were tons of cars and people - the rides were all running - it was quite the event.

We found 4 or 5 caches on the outskirts of Ludington before we entered the town. They were all fairly easy ones (those are the ones we like best). We went by a water tower, a lookout tower, an old cemetery, and a memorial to Pere Marquette for starters. At the lookout tower, we found some mind boggling graffiti - we don't have a clue!



Our jeep at the lookout.



We were so impressed with Ludington! (http://www.visitludington.com) The town itself is beautiful, with many big old homes. Their Lake Michigan waterfront is just amazing - a really nice, sandy beach, two breakwaters, and of course the best lake in the world. It's so sandy that there are wind-blown drifts of sand left after the winter piled four feet high in the parking lot, and even on the steps of some nearby condos. We enjoyed driving around town, taking it all in. Ate lunch at the House of Flavors - gee I wish Traverse had one. They're just in Ludington and Manistee - great place to grab a sandwich.

After lunch we found the Ludington Municipal Marina - what a beautiful spot. Instead of an Open Space, they have Waterfront Park, which has a playground, walkways, and a sculpture garden. The sculptures were the real reason for the road trip. They are placed around the walkway by the water, and they are all so well done. The statues are approachable and touchable, and there were many families in the park today taking pictures.







T.C.'s Open Space pales by comparison. We were jealous of Ludington - and I didn't even mention the murals, the carferries and the sandcastle museum.

We found a few more caches on the way home. We also saw swarms of bugs - clouds of bugs, actually - have no idea what was up with that. There were so many clouds of tiny bugs that at times it looked like a forest fire. It went on for miles and miles - quite unbelievable.





We stopped in Frankfort for dinner at Dinghy's - the perfect end of a perfect day. Got home around 8:30 - a 12 hour Mother's Day!

Some of Dick's cache logs for today:

Geocaching

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05/08/2011 You found BIG BLUE 'M'---WT 3 Visit Log
After a long Mother's Day caching and sight seeing excursion, we were ready to push on to Frankfort for a much anticipated dinner at Dinghy's when we noticed the name of this cache. As life-long die hard Wolverine fans, we could not resist. Tired or not, micro or not, we could NOT just drive through town and ignore a cache named BIG BLUE M. Thanks for the fun.

05/08/2011 You found Tram Law Ludington Visit Log
After a great lunch at the House of Flavors we spent some time in the park enjoying the sculptures and the families. We are jealous, what a great feature. Sadly, Traverse City has nothing to compare. Running out of time and with many miles to go before we slept, (as well as a dinner at Dinghy's in Frankfort) we had time for only one cache in town. We had never heard of Tram Law before. Another first. I must say that the description is more exciting than the cache. This poor gal needs a new skirt. TFTS

05/08/2011 You found The Peoples Cache Visit Log
On this warm, sunny Mothers Day, we drove down to Ludington to see the sculptures in their beautiful waterfront park. No excursion would be complete with out a cache or ten. Not being great fans of micros or skirt lifters, we sought out this one for a stop on our way home. A nice stroll in an interesting spot. No fisher folk today and a quick easy find. Signed the log, took nothing and left our card and Apache Tears. Thanks for the fun!

05/08/2011 You found Grant township Cemetery Visit Log
It is so much fun to cruise around in our Jeep with the window off, not quite top down weather yet but it's getting close. We really enjoy the Spirit Quest/Cemetery caches, with out them we would just drive on past. We find however that a stroll among the stones is extremely interesting. The section of the stones of some Native Americans was the highlight for us. The size of the downed trees near the cache is amazing. They have been down for quite a while, wonder how old they are. We signed the log, traded sigs, and left a matchbox car. Thanks for bringing us to this unique spot.

05/08/2011 You found Phillips Rest 1866 Visit Log
We enjoy Spirit Quest/Cemetery caches. We had planned a trip to Ludington back in March. We wanted to visit the downtown park and view the sculptures. No excursion would be complete with out grabbing a few caches. When we drove up there was a muggle mobile parked at the entrance but no one in view. As I walked to GZ, a couple came out of the woods. No GPS was evident, only a camera, wished them a Happy Mothers Day and went to the cache. We discussed their appearance and the mom on our team spotted their name in the log. By the time we figured it out they were long gone. We signed the log and left our card and pathtag. After replacing the cache I strolled to the edge of the bluff. WOW! that drop makes the one at the Stocking Drive at Sleeping Bear look tame. Thanks for bringing us here.

05/08/2011 You posted a note for Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust Visit Log
We were checking some of Ludington's caches and worked on this. After grabbing the required information, we "solved" the puzzle and set out to find the cache. Unfortunately, our results took us to a cache we'd just found! We decided to work on it over lunch at The House of Flavors. We think we've solved it but ran out of time before we could go to the final.

05/08/2011 You found Suttons Landing Visit Log
Well we've seen their Bay but this is our first trip to their landing. Out and about on a beautiful Mother's Day to visit Ludington and grab a few caches along the way. We signed the log, took only trash, and left our card and some Fool's Gold. Thanks for showing this spot to us.

05/08/2011 You found LookOut 2 Visit Log
Mother's Day and the weather could not be better! We had planned a Ludington excursion for late March but the weather would not cooperate. Our main goal is to visit the park in town and enjoy the sculptures but we might as well grab a few caches while we're at it. The cranes were active in the marsh. We got accustomed to their racket down in Florida. Found the cache in good shape, left our card and some Fools Gold. Took some trash that was lying about and a picture of the name Marissa Nicole Steiger that is scrawled on the tower. Wonder if we could be related.

05/08/2011 You found Under the Water Works Visit Log
In January or February, we saw a report on the sculptures in downtown Ludington on Destination Michigan and planned an excursion. Originally planned for March, the weather was not kind and so we put it off until Mother's Day. It has been great fun. Traveling in our new cachemobile toy, an 02 yellow Rubicon and attempting to use our new paperless toys including a new iphone, we have had a blast! This is one of the last places where we'd expect to encounter muggles but some happy folks were out on a Mom's Day stroll. Signed the log, left our card and pathtag. Thanks for adding to our day.

05/08/2011 You found A Titan Visit Log
What a fantastic Mother's Day! We came down to Ludington to see the sculptures in the town park as a result of a TV program we'd see last February. After a couple of postponements, today was the day. Of course, an outing would not be complete without a cache or two. (Or 10) Took nothing, left Apache Tears. Thanks for the fun

The Lights Are On

A Prairie home Companion with Garrison Keillor was on NPR this morning. He was broadcasting from Detroit. One of the featured musicians was a song writer named Joel Mabus. This song about Michigan touched my Michigan heart. It doesn't mention T.C., but it's still a grabber:

How Dick Spent His Snow Day

I was on the computer early this morning when Dick came upstairs and said he wanted to show me something shocking. I followed him downstairs, thinking I was going to see some deer, or a bobcat or even tracks of a bobcat. He opened the garage door and the driveway was blocked by a fallen tree! It really WAS shocking!

He plugged in his small electric chain saw and went to work removing it piece by piece, branch by branch and hauling all of the bio-mass off to the side of the driveway.











It's all cleared away now - at least enough so we could drive the car out if we wanted to. Dick is really good at clearing away downed trees and brush!

This is Spring?

Dick and I are ready for winter to be over. Over - really over - no more snow and freezing temps. He sent this letter to the kids. It's a good description of what passes for Spring in T.C.

We have had a few signs of spring, all the normal ones; robins, redwing blackbirds, even a butterfly, but we still have 6+ inches of snow on the deck and the pile outside the front door is chest high. This week however, we've seen the first human signs of spring. The biker boys are cruising River Road on their Harleys, based on the noise level back here in the house, their lives are not at risk. ("LOUD PIPES SAVE LIVES")

On Wed, after an 8 inch dump and with the temp about 35, in the mall we observed a group of young women (girls?) in flip flops. Sure they were wearing jeans and hoodies, but heck, they wear that in July.

After our walk in the mall, we made our mandatory Tour du Traverse. One has to observe the Bay and one of the States top ten Main Streets. Our overnights have been in the teens and the water mass in the bay is near 32 so each morning, if the wind is calm, there is a skim of ice that traps the floating ice masses. Well, on Wednesday, there was a fellow out in it using his kayak as an ice breaker. Nobody swimming yet but there are usually some folks walking the beach.

Down town there have been boys in shorts and tee shirts but the brew pubs might explain that. Then, yesterday was the topper, Although it was sunny, nary a cloud to be seen, the temperature was still in the 40's. Outside the mall having her smoke was a young thing in flip flops, tee shirt and shorts! Who needs Florida? Spring is here. (Ignore the snow in the forecast!)

Oops! It's falling. Big wet flakes but it's not sticking.

Anyway, the folks making syrup are happy.

Leelanau Day

Nice day for a drive! The sky is blue and the sun is shining, but there's still plenty of snow on the ground.

Of course our favorite drive is around Leelanau County. We began in Suttons Bay - went to Hansen's grocery store because they have exciting, exotic, and different items. We got some exotic items and headed for Northport on good old M-22, and then a leisurely drive to Leland.





It was a quiet day, so Lake Michigan was very calm and beautiful.

Oh hooray! By the time we got to Glen Arbor it was lunch time, and you know what that means! ART'S !

Hooray for March 22

Picket

Our new Governor wants teachers and other public employees to make salary and benefit concessions so that he can give all kinds of tax breaks and enticements to corporations. He also wants to severely curtail state school aid, cut the number of police and public safety personnel. These measures ae so counter-intuitive to effective state governance that it would be laughable if it weren't so very sad. As in Wisconsin, he wants to eliminate collective bargaining from the negotiating process - wiping away union rights which have been hard won over the past 50+ years.

Today there was a demonstration in downtown T.C. by teachers, public employees and sympathizers. I don't know how many there were, but there were many.

My favorite picket sign was "Real Nerds Love School".

A close second was "UNIONS - the people who brought you weekends."

Only a teacher would carry a sign that says "I am very upset."

They are chanting "Recall Rick".





We see these actions by newly elected Republican governors as an all out attack on public education. They are also attacking established institutions which are usually supporters of the Democrtic Party. I love this post by my niece Pam on facebook:

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and gave themselves billions in bonuses while paying no taxes? Yeah, me neither.

Pictures, WoW,Puzzles, Caches, Haircut, Library and Groceries

Our whole day is in the title!

I started the day at the computer, first emailing Mike R. with a report about the beta testing I'm doing on his crossword puzzles. Puzzle making is his new hobby, and he's quite good. Then I spent an hour uploading old photos from the scanner to my photo program - object: preservation. Next of course I had to play Wow for another hour - then it was time for cache maintenance.

Dick is working on Expanding Your Universe, which has one stage for each planet. It needed some post-winter upgrading and coord checking. It was a nice day to drive around town from one planet to the next!

Dick had scheduled a haircut, so he dropped me off at the library. I read 5 different magazines - some of it was fascinating stuff.
I found some recipes, some great sounding websites to visit, and a great story about a foundling home 18th century London.

On the way home we stopped at Oleson's to pick up one item, and wound up with two bags full.

My knees still don't hurt and my back is about 75% better. Tomorrow the injection should take full effect. I'm still optimistic.

Shot in the Bum

Still working on getting rid of low back pain. Today's effort consisted of 2 sacroiliac injections - a real low blow! I should know if it's working by Friday or Monday. Already my back is better and my knees don't hurt - a nice side effect.

The injections are very unpleasant, but if it works it will be worth it. Today' shots were number 8 and 9.

I can still feel the "footprint" of the chronic pain - kind of a shadow discomfort, not really pain. I'm patiently waiting for that to go away, but I'm optimistic. Skipping gym tomorrow to give it a chance.